Playlist
by pyrebi
Summary: Three mini ficlets: a mental resistance to being a vessel of God; fantasies and half-formed regrets on the open road; the development of Pamela's psychic powers.


Three mini-ficlets the have only this in common: all three were written in a one-hour burst between 3am and 4am and all three were inspired by flash prompts my friend Victoria gave me. (There prompts were, in order: "Dean Rootless Tree," "Dean Coconut Skins," and "Psychic Pamela Aqualung," so you can totally blame her for any weirdness.) Some language ahead, and some non-graphic sex and violence. Nothing too bad, really. Happy reading!

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**Playlist Trio**  
(_Rootless Tree_, _Coconut Skins_, and _Aqualung_)

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**Rootless Tree**

Here's the thing. Here's the goddamn thing. He never asked to come back, not really. Yeah, he begged for it, down in the Pit. Everybody begs for it there. Everybody begs for a true _death_ there, too. Everybody wants anything, _anything_ but what they've got. But that's not the point.

The point is, and it's all anybody's really trying to say, is that he never asked for this. Eighteen, twenty months ago, he decided that he was gonna spend eternity in Hell for Sam. That's it, that's all. End of story.

_Fuck_, he'd like to have lived through that ordeal. But given the choice between his life or Sammy's, well. Obviously.

But there's this thing, see, where now he's alive again by the _grace of God_. It's taken the piss out of him, really and truly. 'Cause he doesn't like the fact that he has to answer to somebody again, that he's got this, don't even know, _moral obligation_ to follow the instructions he's being fed.

And he can't, he _can't_ say he'd rather go back than listen to Castiel's notions of holiness, but all he can think about is Layla and _you can't just have faith when the miracles happen_, so it's a waiting game after all.

And until the time comes that he has to make a choice, he's gonna eat greasy food and fuck hot women and generally squeeze as much insignificant pleasure as he can out of this indian summer of a life he's living right now. He doesn't think they've realized it yet, but they will sooner or later. Uriel will push too far, too hard.

Seriously, though, come on. If he ignored _Dad_ when the old man told him to waste Sam, they honestly think that just 'cause they've got wings and their six degrees of Kevin Bacon involve some ultimate deity he's gonna turn on his brother?

Fuck 'em.

It _is _nice to have this break from Hell, though.

Just saying.

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**Coconut Skins**

There are these brief moments, nothing really, when there's just a stretch of hot open asphalt in front of him and Sam's snoring in the passenger seat, when his thoughts swing to Indiana, towards a house where he almost lived and a son who was almost his.

He dreams then, eyes fixed on a point a quarter of a mile ahead, and it's not just picnic baskets and invitations then. It's Saturday mornings where the sound of cartoons float up the stairs as he lies between her thighs, it's baseball games where the kids would rather play in the mud than call the match off, it's home base and home cooking and _home_.

It makes something hurt deep in his belly, the thought of it, but it's like a toothache in that if you push at it, even the different pain is a relief.

He's not sure when the content of his jerk-off fantasies shifted from centerfold lesbians to slow sex in the laundry room before the kid comes home from school (_it's his favorite now, 'cause she's doing a whole load and why not just throw what she's wearing in too? And he sees her there, naked, her perfect ass swaying as she hums, and goddamn if he doesn't have her right there on the washing machine)_, but they did. And if it was Sam, he'd call 'im Lucille and ask him about his biological clock, but it's _him_.

It's just…he almost had it. There, in Indiana, he almost had it. And maybe—_maybe_—if he'd tried a little harder, he'd have it now.

But he's driving away from Indiana, out towards Cali with the morning sun in the rearview mirror, and it's hard to look back.

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**Aqualung**

_Pamie_, her mama used to say, _Pamie, don't you go down there_. But it's how she learned, see. It's how she learned the good ones from the bad ones.

She would scrabble together bits from the side of the road, bits of bird bone and smooth skip-stones and the right kinds of dried grass, and if she was patient enough, they'd tell her things. She just quieted her mind, threw them in the air, and they'd tell her things.

And they told her about the man up by the park, the one they'd arrested four times already. They told her to tell him about Annie Maas, and they told her not to cry. And she went and she told that man, told him that he wanted Annie.

And two days later, when they found Annie Maas in the bushes outside her house, insides torn up like something shredded her from the stomach on out, they went to get the man from the park bench. But he was gone, like the bird bones and cherry pits and pebbles had told her he'd be, and Annie Maas wasn't possessed no more, even if she was dead.


End file.
